Poor Tantalus was forever thirsty and hungry even though he stood in a pool of water with fruit hanging overhead. As he leaned to drink, the water receded. As he reached for fruit, the trees pulled back. Tantalus would be a good symbol for a scientist.
Science is a tantalizing subject. To do science means being stretched between knowing and not knowing. Answers arrive only to generate new questions. There’s never an end. Basic scientific thinking begins in the womb. That little brain begins processing sensations like Mom’s activity, the effect of spicy foods, and sounds from the outside. As these sensations begin to differentiate, “categories” becomes a mental tool. Much of the history of science shows the use of categories. Think of Linnaeus’s work to organize plants, Mendeleev’s Periodic Table of Elements, and the sorting of minerals into types.
As parents and teachers, we can encourage scientific categorization in many ways. From a young age, children can become collectors. Having a rock collection, coin collection, shell collection, or Pokémon collection should be a part of every child’s life. Sorting leaves in the fall and preserving them with a picture encourages discrimination and attention to detail. Asking a primary-age child to help sort the junk drawer in the kitchen is a valuable and mind-stimulating activity. Attribute blocks (<$20) are a set of materials to promote higher level sorting. A combination of characteristics can be used to organize the set on a table. We play 20 Questions with the array and learn about Boolean logic. After birth, the baby begins to sense schedules and expect them. This brings out the mental tool of “ordering.” An outgrowth of ordering is “cause and effect.” Cause and effect is a huge part of experimental science. What causes what? Or, as a two-year-old says, “Why? Why? Why?”
When a baby drops food over and over from the high chair to watch the descent, cause and effect is being tested along with the patience of parents. Maybe the experiment is turning the faucet on and off to control the water or seeing how hard you have to hit a glass pane with a rake handle to break it. (Yeah, I got in a lot of trouble for that one.) Understanding how actions and objects are related is a major part of science.
We can encourage more in-depth thinking about causality by wondering along with the children. Instead of giving answers, ask, “What do you think?” Get them to hypothesize and then test what you can to see what you can learn. Just messing about can generate logical wondering. Up to teen years, you can prompt deep thinking with questions like: Why do you think the water in a stream moves? Where do clouds come from? Where does the rain go? What is mud, anyway?
Science education is finding ways to create a thirst and hunger for knowledge that, like Tantalus, is never satisfied.
